Half an hour later they came back laughing, with four rabbits. She displayed her well-remembered skill at skinning and cooking them; Shea thought he had never tasted anything better, nor for that matter seen anything more pleasant than the spectacle of Medoro inserting morsel after morsel of meat into Roger’s mouth, which the latter gulped with a rapidity that suggested he was trying to snap the fingers off.
After the meal, all felt better; Roger almost genial in spite of the fact that he had to be led behind a bush, and Medoro positively brilliant. He improvised comic rhymes; he effectively parodied Dardinell’s parade-ground manner; he did a superb imitation of Atlantès working a complicated spell, including his dismay when the spell produced the wrong results. It came close enough so Shea laughed loud and carefree—whereupon Medoro suddenly went serious.
“Lord Harr,” he said, “now that your breast is broadened, I would seek unto your advice, as that of an uncle or a learned man in the law. According to the most excellent book of the Prophet of God, on whose name be grace, which is the Book of the Cow, it is lawful for a Muslim to take unto wife what woman he desires. Yet it is written also that one wife is insufficient, whereas two quarrel with each other, and if there be three, the two will combine against the third, so that there is no safety but in a fourth. Yet this woman whom I would wed will have me as single wife only.”
Shea smiled wryly. A delicious question to ask him! However, he thought, let’s roll with the punch. He said: “It’s a tough case. If you marry her that way, you violate your religion, and if she marries you any other way, she violates whatever religion she has, if any. I suggest you both become Zoroastrians. That can’t be far from either one.”
Belphegor said: “Who be these Zo-ro-astrans?” She tumbled over the word.
“Oh, they seem to have a pretty sound theology, for my money. They hold the existence of equal and opposed powers of good and evil, Ormazd and Ahriman. Gets around the difficulty of the doctors of theology. If good is omnipotent, how come there’s evil?”
Said the girl: “ ’Tis not far—” and stopped at the gasp of horror from Medoro.
His mouth was flapping open and shut, rather like that of a carp in a pool. When he found words, it was to say: “The Ghebers! To be a fire-worshipping alchemist! Why, they are filthy cannibals, who dance naked and eat the limbs of human beings! Why, I’d not union with the Queen of the Diamond Isles, had she all wisdom and the bed-arts of the Ethiopians, were she a Gheber! Nay, were she the most beauteous of mortal women to outward seeming, I would know her for the foulest of harlots by such token, who dined only on broiled rats’ bones and hired Negro slaves to do her service.”
Belphegor drew in a long breath. “My Lord Medoro,” she said, “that is somewhat ungentle of you. I would pray you to think more deeply on’t while we make our couches.” She was on her feet, all one graceful movement. “I’m for a tree.”
###
Next morning they breakfasted on the proceeds of the girl’s hunting, Medoro slightly querulous over the lack of salt and Roger grumbling that there was no Imam to call the proper hour of prayer. Shea said: “The way I figure it out, I doubt whether we can make the castle today, unless we get some animals to carry us in Pau.”
Medoro looked at the girl. “By Allah, if we reach that castle never, it were soon enough for me, unless there be a good Kazi with witnesses there to marry us at once.”
Shea opened his mouth, but the girl beat him to it. “Nay, fair Medoro,” she said, “let us think not so fast on marriage. For behold, I am as bound by my plighted word as ever knight was, to stand by Sir Harold till this quest be fully accomplished. Whatever faith holds, one must keep faith.”
The dampening of Medoro’s spirits was only temporary. By time they were ready to start, he was gay and cheerful again, and when Shea led Roger to the ass with the intention of repeating the previous day’s arrangement, the poet darted ahead and mounted it at once.
“Hey!” said Shea. “You had your turn yesterday. Now look here—”
Medoro looked down from his seat. “Now Allah burn my liver if I ride not this ass today,” he said. “O, son of shame—”
Smack! It was a long reach but Shea landed right on the side of the jaw and Medoro landed with a plunk on the ground. He heaved himself up on one elbow as Shea looked at his own tingling knuckles, wondering what had made his own temper depart to the region where the woodbine twineth.
When he raised his eyes Belphegor was between them, hand on her little belt-knife. “De Shea,” she said, in a grating voice, “this passes bearing; a most vile peasantish discourtesy. You are no more my knight, nor I your lady, till you make full apology, nor will I hold communion with you else.”
Medoro rode the ass. Shea, trudging along in the dirt and stones, with his hand on Roger’s halter, wondered whether the light of his life were exactly bright.
Proceeding grumpily under the pillar of disagreement that kept them all silent, they were still well short of Pau when afternoon drew in and Belphegor announced shortly that if they were to sup, she would have to hunt. This time Medoro did not accompany her, but as he got down from the ass, he suddenly shaded his eyes against the sun and pointed:
“Inshallah!” he said. “Lord Harr, look on a marvel. That tree is surely of peach, such as they have in the land of Circassia, and as the Prophet is the Witness, we shall have fruit to our repast.” He skipped off with no sign of blister or limp and in a few moments was back with his arms full of ripe peaches.
It was at that moment that inspiration descended on Harold Shea. “Sit down and take care of Roger while I prepare them for eating,” he said. Medoro wrinkled his eyes round a glance that might have been one of suspicion. “Listen, take it easy,” said Shea. “I’m sorry I got sore at you this morning.”
The poet’s face broke out in a beatific smile. “Of a truth, Lord Harr, it is said that the Franks are in fury uncontrollable, but if one bear with them in friendship generous.” He took the slip-knot turban and led Roger to one side.
Shea took off his helmet, stuck it in the ground on its spike; it made a magnificent punchbowl. Four of the peaches went into it. Shea scratched the letters C, H and O with his knifepoint on the remaining peaches and arranged them as Doc Chalmers had done when he so unexpectedly produced the Scotch whiskey in Faerie. Accident that time, Shea told himself; but this time whatever happened would be on purpose. He leaned over the helmet and with one eye cocked in the direction where Medoro was rather languidly holding to Roger’s noose as the latter recounted one of his tales of assault and battery, repeated softly what he could remember of Doc’s spell:
“So frequently as I with present time
The earlier image of our joy compare,
So frequently I find our less than prime,
And little joy than that we once did share:
Thus do I ask those things that once we had
To make an evening run its magic course,
And banish from this company the sad
Thoughts that in prohibition have their source:
Change, peaches! From the better to the worse.”
For a moment he had the dreadful fear that this would give him a mess of rotten peaches, but when he opened his eyes, the helmet was brimmed to overflowing with a golden liquid in which peach pits and deflated peachskins floated. Shea fished one of the latter out and tasted the surplus. It was peach brandy all right, of a magnificent flavor, and now that he caught it at the back of his palate, a potency rarely equaled in his own cosmos—about 120-proof, he would judge.
“Hey!” he called. “Bring him over here, Medoro. I’ve made some peach sherbet for you.”
The poet got to his feet, jerking the prisoner along. He leaned over the helmet and sniffed. “By Allah, it has a noble perfume, Lord Harr. You are the best of shahbands; but it should be cooled with snow for fair sherbet.”
“I’ll trot right over to one of the mountains and get some,” said Shea.
Medoro knelt and thr
usting his face down to the edge of the helmet, took a long pull. “Allah!” he said. “Of a truth, snow is sorely needed, for this sherbet burns like fire. If this be poison—” he glared at Shea.
“Then I’ll be poisoned, too,” and Shea took a drink for himself. It certainly did warm the gullet going down.
“Give me some of this sherbet, I pray, in the name of Allah,” begged Roger. Shea cautiously disengaged the spike of the helmet from the ground and held it for him, as he took a sip, then a drink.
When he lifted his face from the cup, Medoro said: “Oh lord and brother blest and to profit increased, I would have more of your Frankish sherbet; for the eve is chill, and it does provide a warmth interior.”
The helmet went round, and then again, Shea not stinting when it came his turn. Belphegor’s anger with him began to fade a little into the background. She’d get over it as soon as she realized her real identity, and he could think of a dozen, twenty, thirty schemes to produce that desirable result, only requiring slight details to be filled in. He could take care of that any time; in the meanwhile, Medoro was one of the most fascinating conversationalists he had ever met, and even Roger was not so bad a guy when you got to know him. The Saracen paladin was telling a tale of his adventures in Cathay, which Medoro was weaving into a ballad of immensely complicated rhythm-scheme, but he kept missing the rhyme at the third line of each stanza, and Shea was correcting him when Belphegor suddenly stood in the center of the little group, a brace of black-plumed birds in her hand.
Medoro looked up, and his mouth fell open. “Now may Ifrits remove me to the outermost depths of the sea an I futter not this damsel,” he shouted, and lurched halfway to his feet, then sat down. His brows contorted with effort; he tried to get up again and made it. Belphegor dropped the birds.
“I love you for your exceeding loveliness and surpassing beauty,” said Medoro, “and you shall grant me the desire of the body, as Ali bin-Hayat says:
“Man craving pardon will uplift their hands;
Women pray pardon with their legs on high:
Out on it for a pious, prayerful work!
The Lord shall raise it in the depths to lie.”
He giggled at the girl’s horror-filled face, hiccupped, spread his arms and ran at her.
Smack! Medoro sat down abruptly. Shea cried triumphantly: “A most vile peasantish discourtesy!”
The young Moor heaved himself up again, his handsome features contorted. “By Allah!” he said. “You foulest of tribades and filthiest of harlots, that would reject the love of one of the house of Hassan for base-born Negroes! Farewell! I seek the camp where there are boys a thousand times lovelier and more faithful.” Before any of them could guess his intention, he took three staggering steps to the ass, was on its back and belaboring it to a gallop in the direction whence they had come with his scabbarded scimitar.
Belphegor stood at gaze a second, then snatched up her bow and sent an arrow after him—too late.
“Shurr Harol’,” said Roger with owlish gravity, “ish even as I have shaid. Thish red Frankish hair ish ill-omened. You had better be drowned in the shee if you sell not that slave.”
Shea ignored him to take the helmet over to Belphegor. “Here, take a drink of this,” he said.
She gave him a long, slow glance and accepted the offer with slightly trembling hands. The shaking quieted. “My thanks and good grace to you, Sir Harold,” she said, “for I perceive that it is to you I owe this. It is like—like—” She seemed to flounder for a lost memory.
Shea said: “In Latin they would say, ‘In vino Veritas’.”
“Oh, aye. Taunt me not; I should have seen him with clear eyes when he would have left you in the tent or put the hermit to the torture. A niggeling and wittold does not make himself a true man with a lute and fair words.”
She sat down and pressed the palms of both hands to her eyes. Shea sat beside her and put an arm round her shoulders, but she shook him off. From the background Roger croaked: “Flee away from thish ill-omened wench.”
Shea could not be sure whether she was crying or not, and his heart turned flip-flops as he tried to think of something to do. He wished he had not drunk so much of the peach brandy; there seemed to be a haze between him and what he was trying to think.
The hands came down and Belphegor turned a woebegone face toward him. “Nay, the fault’s my own,” she said, in a flat voice, “and you have been my true knight that would have saved me from a villain. Heigh-ho!” She sighed and stood up. “It falls dusk and we must sup soon if we’re to take the road of our quest tomorrow. Nay, no hand-kissing; I’ll not have these empty courtesies.”
Fifteen
They came down a hill toward Pau through the morning light. “I suppose we could get some horses there,” remarked Shea, gazing at the range of thatched roofs. “Has nobody any money? I’m broke, and we haven’t got Medoro with his gold bracelets.”
Belphegor laughed. “Not a groat, I. To those of the woodland seed ’tis the forbidden thing.”
Shea looked at Roger. “O man,” said the paladin, “know that the hardest of riding is better than the easiest footgoing, as says al-Qa’saf. But as for money, what need? You have a sword to take or magics to make as does my uncle Atlantès when he would have money.”
Shea gazed at Roger in astonishment. It was about the first time he had ever heard the big man express an idea, and for a wonder, it seemed a fairly good one. The only trouble was that he had a little less than no idea what type of spell would produce money. The passes, yes—one could manage those—but the psychosomatic element? Well, one could only try.
A hundred yards or so back a bank had caved in on a deposit of fine golden sand. He scooped up a double handful of this, laid it on a handkerchief and tied the corners together. Then he laid the improvised pouch on the ground and traced out a pair of interlacing pentacles, like those on the doors of Atlantès’ room in Castle Carena. Belphegor was watching him, and it disturbed him slightly.
“Take this guy a little way off and cover him, will you?” he asked. “Don’t let him watch.”
The spell—ah, yes, of course, good old Kipling. He chanted:
“Iron’s for the soldier, silver for the maid,
Copper for the craftsman, working at his trade.
Sand is but silly stuff, sifting to a fall;
But gold, red gold! is the master of them all.”
The handkerchief sagged and looked lumpy. Shea picked it up and heard a gratifying clink within. “All right,” he called. “I guess we’re set now.”
The approaches to Pau seemed curiously deserted, the brown and green fields vacant of working men, no women and children at the doorways. Shea puzzled over it until he recalled what the wine-merchant had said about the auto-da-fé, and felt a sudden need for haste. But just at that moment a clanging sound came to his ears, and across the street he perceived a village smith, hammering away at an open-air anvil.
Shea led his prisoner over, and greetings were exchanged. “Where is everybody today?” he asked.
The smith jerked a thumb. “Down the road. Saint’s shrine,” he said shortly. “Auto-da-fé for the monster. Can’t waste time myself.” He hefted his hammer, in evident desire for them to be gone so he could carry on with his job. Shea thought these Basques a singularly uncommunicative lot. Nevertheless, he tried again: “Monster? What monster?”
“Devil. Looks like a wolf. Caught in a wolf-net.”
That would be Votsy, all right. The need for hurry was becoming acute, but horses would help. “We’d like to buy horses.” He jingled the handkerchief of money.
The lines round the smith’s eyes wrinkled craftily. “Have some,” he said. “Come, see.”
“I don’t think I need to. You see, we’re rather in a hurry with this prisoner, and we can get any money we spend back from the baron where we’re taking him.”
Suspicion mingled with the craft. The smith was clearly not used to dealing with customers who bought without a
sking the price. “Ten bezants,” he said, flatly.
“Okay,” said Shea. “Lead them out.” He opened up his handkerchief-purse and produced a handful of bright gold pieces. As they touched the anvil, however, they instantly changed to little pinches of sand. The smith looked at them and then at Shea. “What’s this?” he demanded.
Shea could feel a flush creeping up his face. “Ha, ha, just a joke,” he said hollowly, and reaching into the pile, selected another handful to hand them to the smith. But suspicion had now completely gained the upper hand in the man. He rang each piece on the anvil, or tried to, for as soon as metal touched metal, these too dissolved into little cones of sand.
“Scoundrel! Cheat! Magician!” bellowed the man, gripping his hammer in both hands. “Out! Out! Ha, priest!”
Fortunately, he did not offer to pursue as the three beat a hasty retreat. Too late, on the road again, Shea remembered that Kipling’s original poem had made iron, not gold, the master of them all, so that of course the spell had gone sour. It did not help matters any that even with the halter around his neck, Roger was snickering.
Shea turned toward the girl. “Look,” he said. “This hasn’t anything to do with the job we’re working on—” he glanced at Roger “—but I think a friend of mine is in trouble. Would it put you out too much to speed up the works?”
For answer she actually smiled at him. “Lead on,” she said, and taking one of the arrows from her quiver, prepared to urge Roger to speed; but then: “Hold. Here’s one that weeps and may not, for chivalry, be neglected.”
Shea turned. With her back toward him and feet in the ditch that bordered the road, there was indeed one that wept. Her black hair was neatly ordered and her figure was young, which lent a certain predisposition toward relieving her distress. As the three halted beside her, she turned a face definitely pretty, though tear-streaked and somewhat dirty, toward them. “They—they—they seek to slay my sweetheart,” she got out, before dissolving in another torrent of sobbing.
The Complete Compleat Enchanter Page 40